to his very marrow, should
absorb his father's point of view, grow up and run, with mechanical
obedience, the farm he abhorred? The very possibility made her shudder.
If only she could rescue him in some manner, help him to break free
from this bondage. College--that would be the open avenue. Martin would
insist upon an agricultural course, but she would use all her tact and
rally all her powers that Billy might be given the opportunity to fit
himself for some congenial occupation. Martin might even die, and if she
were to have the farm to sell and the interest from the investments to
live on, how happy she could be with this son of hers, so like her in
temperament. She caught herself up sharply. Well, it was Martin himself
who was driving her to such thoughts.

"You are like old Dorcas," she once told her husband, driven desperate
by the exhausted, harrowed look that was becoming habitual in Bill's
face. "You're trampling down your own flesh and blood, that's what
you're doing--eating the heart out of your own boy."

"Go right on," retorted Martin, all his loneliness finding vent in his
bitter sneer, "tell that to Bill. You've turned him against me from the
day he was born. A fine chance I've ever had with my son!"

VI. DUST IN HIS EYES

SUCH was the relationship of the Wades when one morning the mail brought
them a letter from Sharon, Illinois. Rose wrote that she was miserably
unhappy with her step-mother. Could she live with them until she found
a job? She had been to business college and was a dandy stenographer.
Maybe Uncle Martin could help her get located in Fallon.

"Of course I will, if she's got her head set on working," was his
comment. "I'll telegraph her to come right along. Might as well wire the
fare, too, while I'm about it and tell her to let us know exactly when
she can get here."

Mrs. Wade looked up quickly at this unusual generosity, yet she was, she
realized, more startled than surprised. For had not little Rose been
the one creature Martin had loved and to whom he had enjoyed giving
pleasure? It had been charming--the response of the big, aloof man to
the merry child of seven, but that child was now a woman, and, in
all probability, a beautiful one. Wasn't there danger of far more
complicated emotions which might prove even uprooting in their
consequences? Mrs. Wade blushed. Really, she chided herself sternly, she
wouldn't have believed she could be such an old goose--going out of her